The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-11-17
rEr INITIALS GIVE THEM AWAY.

A blind man would know that ". H Il.
Smith was William Henry Harrison smith
as soon as he saw his card, and IL q. W,
Shocks does not want 10 be called George
Washington Shocks he had better part his
name in the middle thus, g. William Shocks.
That is the only thing that viii save him
from the air presumption of being one OF
the fathers of his country's many relics.
A. j. Hogg should be Andrew jackson
Hogg if he is not. but the chances are that
he is, but when y. b. appears before the
name Of Brown il is a question whether 1t
stands for Napoleon Bonaparte or Nota
Bene. 1t is safe to assume that whenever
the initials of great man
introduce common name the
great mans name has been linked
with that of the son of some less illustrious
admirer. 4 generation from now there
will be no doubt of the name of u. Z.
Schmidt, but if Mr.. Schmidt wishes to con
meet himself more intimately with the Dem
ocratic party he will sign himself q. Cleve-
land Schmidt. Whenever the signature w.
George Williams appears it is a sure sign
that the posSessOr thinks his father non
compos mentis. The fact that the name is
divided so is positive evidence Of a reason
for, and there is little doubt but the reason
lies in the idiocy of a parent who thought 1t
funny to brand his sol William Williams.
Snch parents are not subject to
the laws forbidding cruelty TO
animals, but they ought TO be.
John johnson is another of the same ilk,
though it is a shade less criminal The
doubling of names seems 10 be on the in
crease and it should be taken as tendency
of the human race toward total depravity.
PEEP AT THE HOTEL REGISTERS.
A glance thr- ugh few pages of the ho-
tel registers win show that there are GER
fai oft IN, hof
others. A MORNING News reporter went
over the Pulaski and Screyen registers yes
day morning Foremost among the initials
is j. and that is probably because OF
the immense popularity Of John and James.
As the initial of the second name c. seems
to appear more often than any other One
remarkable fact is that while S. is more
frequently the initial of the surname than
any other letter it seldom occurs in the
ledgers make extra pages for the s., but
page after page of a hotel register may be
gone over without finding s. is given name.
OF course, the performance of S., as an ini-
tial to the surname is in part due to the fire.
quency of Smiths, but leaving that very pro-
life family out of the count altogether, there
still remain more names beginning with S
than with any other letter, but it is proba-
bly, because of the Smiths that is avoided
in the given names. The hotel register
shows another thing, viz: That only about
one man in 10000 ever signs his name in
anything but scrawl. Not one person
who has registered in this city within the
past thirty days has been able to write his
name dacently. Business men have
come here, but they have left the
mark of anything but good business
hands behind them. Actors have recorded
a number of fourishes, poorly executed, but
only the clerk can translate them. The
average arrival" stands no chance of ever
being a successful forger, but be that as it
may, the originator of a name has never
yet laid claim to his invention, and the
world continues to use over and over again
the same old list.